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He is described as "armageddon" compared to Vaas Montenegro and is a drug kingpin and brutal human trafficker.[1] He is the leader of the Privateers, a mercenary group which protects Hoyt and his businesses, based around the South Island which Hoyt himself "rules". According to Dennis, Hoyt was the source of "all the evil" happening on the island. Hoyt was one of the two most dangerous people to set foot on the Rook Islands, the other being Vaas.

Contents

Biography

Early life

“We have a special on this month; your very own island, for the head of Jason Brody.”— Hoyt to his Privateers

Hoyt Volker was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1967 during the Apartheid era. As a child, Hoyt had a tough upbringing due to his father, a diamond miner regularly abusing him. The abuse from Hoyt's father resulted in Hoyt swearing to prove that he was better than his father. After Hoyt allegedly killed his father as revenge for the abuse inflicted on him, he became a member of a consortium of pirates and drug dealers. Determined to take over, Volker usurped the pirate boss's leadership by forming an alliance with the rest of the pirates and then brutally executed the pirate leader in front of his family.

Discovering Rook Islands

Around that time, Hoyt had become an international drug dealer and human trafficker, selling people and drugs for large sums of money. At one point prior to 2012, Hoyt discovered the dangerous Rook Islands and took them over with the help of the Privateers, a mercenary group which Hoyt formed. After taking over the islands, Hoyt established (according to agent Willis) the biggest slave, weapons and drug trafficking ring in the South Pacific, which he calls his "life's work".

Hoyt also met a Rakyat warrior named Vaas, who had become addicted to drugs that were brought to the islands by Hoyt's men. Finding potential in him, Hoyt offered him money and power, to which Vaas could not say "no". Vaas came to not only become Volker's right-hand man but also became the leader of the Pirates and helped Hoyt with delivering drugs overseas or capturing people for ransom.

Hoyt's base of operations is on the Southern Island, which is protected by his bloodthirsty mercenaries, while the North Island was given by Hoyt to be ruled by Vaas and his psychotic pirates. Hoyt would also be associated with a man named Doug, who would trick tourists to come to the islands, where they get captured, held for ransom and sold into slavery. Last but not least, Hoyt also met a hitman, named Bambi "Buck" Hughes, who would kill people for Hoyt when he called and in one case purchases a slave from him.

The Beginning

Hoyt visited Vaas's camp on the North Island to check on his new batch of slaves, which consisted of Jason Brody, Grant Brody, Riley Brody, Oliver Carswell, Keith Ramsay, Liza Snow, Daisy Lee and Vincent Salas, who for some unknown reason was killed by Vaas. Hoyt told Vaas to stop scaring Jason and Grant and asked Vaas to help him with the "rejects". Hoyt then left the scene. Grant and Jason manage to escape from their cages and try to stealthly escape Vaas's camp and locate their friends and Riley. However, they are discovered by Vaas, who kills Grant, before turning his gun on Jason, who manages to escape and is rescued by Dennis, a member of the Rakyat, who want to see Vaas and Hoyt dead and clean up the islands, which they see as rightfully theirs.

Return to Rook Islands

At the guidance of CIA agent Willis Huntley, who has been keeping tabs on Volker for years, Jason burns Hoyt's drug fields on the North Island, to lure Hoyt there as Hoyt tends to travel around the world for business and does not stay on the dangerous islands. The plan was a success and Hoyt came with his personal bodyguards by helicopter to personally oversee Brody's death. He briefly met Vaas and scolded him for not taking matters seriously with Jason, even going as far as telling Vaas that it is by his (Hoyt's) grace that Vaas's head isn't impaled on the antenna of Hoyt's car but quickly calms down.

Hoyt then went to Beras Town, as he believed native sympathizers have stolen and hidden there an important transportation manifest. Although Hoyt did not find the manifest, he still executed most of the natives that live there and burned down their houses. Jason arrived in Beras Town and from an abandoned shack, spied on Volker with his camera. Volker can be seen telling his privateers and two pirates that anyone who helps the natives in the Rook Islands will be killed. Hoyt then made three survivors run across a rice field, filled with mines. Two of the survivors die, with only one survivor managing to cross the field and hiding behind cover.

Satisfied, Hoyt left the survivor to be killed by the pirates and left the island with his helicopter. Jason saved the survivor and managed to save almost all of his friends. Then he liberated the North Island by killing most of the pirates, taking over their outposts, killing Buck and finally killing Vaas, avenging his brother Grant.

Hoyt smoking Cohiba cigars in his office

After learning of Vaas's demise, Hoyt started recruiting new mercenaries, as he knew that Jason would come for him. Jason landed with a wingsuit on the Southern Island, silently killed a lone recruit named Foster and took his mercenary uniform to listen to Hoyt's speech, who told his new recruits about his three rules: kill any native on sight, protect his products and give him all their profits. He burned alive a man to show them what will happen if they break his rules. He also promised to reward with an island the one who rids him of Brody, before leaving with his bodyguards.

Hoyt blows up a boat, containing hostages while listening to "Ride of the Valkyries"

Later Jason, who is posing as Foster, meets Hoyt in his office to give him evidence of traitors within his organisation to gain his trust, with the help of high-ranking Privateer member Sam Becker, who is an undercover CIA operative, working for Huntley.
“So, hobbies. Cooking, painting, movies, crystal meth... What are yours?”— Hoyt to "Foster"

After a small conversation with "Foster", Hoyt ordered him to torture a prisoner downstairs, who is in fact Riley, Jason's brother, originally thought to be dead. He says in a very taunting manner that he will watch the footage, all while smoking and listening to "Ride of Valkyries". After "Foster" reluctantly tortures Riley, Hoyt congratulates him on getting the needed information from Riley and asks both Jason and Sam to play poker with him. They accept the invitation. While Hoyt is in his compound, Jason and Sam destroy Hoyt's communications centre and blow up his fuel depot, causing chaos in his "Gestappo".

Final poker game and death

Jason and Sam go to Hoyt's compound to play poker with Hoyt, while secretly planning to kill him. The first hand ends with Hoyt and Jason winning and Sam losing. Hoyt then takes out his personal knife and stabs Sam in the neck, instantly killing him. He reveals that he knew all along that it was Jason in disguise and how he underestimated him, before he tortured his brother and destroyed half of Hoyt's organisation. They continue playing cards with Jason betting his life. Jason wins a hand, and Hoyt rewards him by forgiving him for his previous actions. He tells him to name his price, saying that everyone has one and points Jason and the rest as puppets while Hoyt points himself as the one who pulls the strings, stating the system was designed to work that way. Jason simply shows more of his resentment towards Hoyt and curses his "system".

After Jason loses the next hand, Hoyt tells Jason he will be merciful and "only" cut off one of his fingers every time he loses. Hoyt cuts off Jason's ring finger. Then Jason enters a hallucination, in which only the two of them are in a small and dark room. Hoyt and Jason then begin a knife fight, in which Jason seems to have the upper hand. Hoyt urges him to hurry up, as Riley is at the airport, awaiting to be delivered to a "special" man in Yemen, who likes them young. The statement only angered Jason even more and made him more determined to kill Hoyt.

Hoyt's final fight

Then Hoyt says that he has powerful friends, who will hunt down Jason if he kills him. Jason brushes off the threat and says they won't find anything left of Hoyt. After Jason stabs Hoyt in the shoulder, Hoyt says that Jason can't win and that he (Hoyt) holds all the cards. Then Jason asks him why he was so afraid. After a struggle, Jason manages to stab Hoyt in the side and then disarm him and stab him in the neck with his own knife. After that Jason can also optionally stab Hoyt in the forehead, although by then the fight is already won. Hoyt's lifeless body the collapses to the floor.

Jason awakes from his hallucination and finds out that not only he killed Hoyt, but also killed a lot of Hoyt's guards. He fights through the compound to get to the airport, while killing many of Hoyt's men, saves Riley and then the two leave the South Rook island with a helicopter, all while laying fire on Hoyt's men and their nearby camps.

It is unknown what happens of the remaining Privateers, who worked for Hoyt. It is possible that after Hoyt's death and the destruction of his organisation, some of the remaining privateers left the Rook islands while others stayed and tried to take over Hoyt's position or all of them were finished off by the Rakyat, who can finally clean up the islands, after the deaths of Vaas and Hoyt and the destruction of their slave and drug businesses.

Personality and Traits

Like most (if not all) of the game's antagonists, Hoyt Volker appeared to be a sadistic, vicious, emotionless, deranged and mentally unstable psychopath who was shown ruthlessly torturing and executing innocents and was the main reason for the Rook Islands' endless turmoil that has taken the lives of many of the island's residents whom Hoyt despises for an unknown reason. His crude and bloodthirsty nature is further shown when he makes the remaining survivors in Beras Town to run across a rice field, filled with landmines, when he asks "Foster" to interrogate Riley for information and then brutally beat him up until he can't stand, when he ruthlessly kills an unsuspecting Sam and then makes a crude joke out of it by saying that he is sitting this game out and when he blew up a boat, full of hostages (because the customer would not negotiate outside country lines) and laughed maniacally at this murder act while listening to "Ride of Valkyries". Hoyt describes all of the Rakyat and the native people as savages and orders his men to kill any natives on sight. He is also more than willing to kill anyone who is allied with the natives.

Nearly disturbing as Vaas with his strikening eyes and thick and angry South African accent, Hoyt was arrogant, mocking, taunting, smug and overly confident in dialogue but also a highly intelligent and calculating human trafficker and drug lord who until his death, was arguably the most dangerous man in the Rook Islands and the leader of the "Rook Island food chain". Like Vaas, he was also a very greedy and ruthless man who showed little if any sympathies for the people he kidnaps and sells them into slavery. During his fight with Jason, he makes a crude joke to him by telling him that he sold his brother to a man in Yemen who "likes them young".

Despite Hoyt not being a strong masculine like Vaas or Buck, he compensated for this with his agility and his surprisingly strong knife fight skills. He also showed that he was a man whom not everyone would mess with and showed impressive leadership skills - he controlled an army of bloodthirsty mercenaries and had control over Vaas who despite being bigger in strength and height and was a ruthless and psychotic killer, seemed to fear Volker and carried out any task he gave him.

Hoyt also shows that he is quite retaliative as he goes as far as burning a man (a possible member of Hoyt's army) alive in a cage to show to the others what will happen if they betray him or break his rules.

As a passionate gambler Hoyt has deep pride in his ability to read people and take large bets - including ones at great personal and financial risk to him. Despite already deducing that “Foster” was Jason Brody presumably upon their first meeting Hoyt did not kill him but allowed him to believe he was under the pretence of his false identity anyway, even though it gave Jason the opportunity to dismantle nearly half of his organisation.

Trivia

He is the second South African antagonist in the Far Cry series, after Hector Voorhees in Far Cry 2 (although his role is considerably more prominent).

Hoyt is briefly seen at the beginning of the game telling Vaas to stop scaring Jason and his brother, Grant. He's also seen in Jason's hallucination torturing Riley in Meet Citra.

It is implied by Sam that only reason why the privateer attire will work for Jason is that Hoyt has never seen Jason's face, he only knows that he has RakyatTattoos. However, in the basement at Hoyt's stronghold, one of the privateers is watching the video from Jason's camera, which shows Jason's face multiple times and even has his brothers calling out for him, implying that the video has been made public around the island, so it should be assumed that Hoyt also watched it.

It is possible that like Foster or any other recruit or privateer, Jason used face paint or a face-obscuring bandanna rendering the knowledge of his face useless. That might be the reason why Hoyt, can't recognize Jason before he spots his eyes when torturing Riley.

It is also possible that he knew Jason's identity when he stated 4 hostages when torturing Riley despite not telling Jason the exact amount of hostages lost(Liza, Daisy, Oliver, and Keith).

It is also possible that Hoyt knew who Jason was all along and was playing a mind game with him. This is implied in the final battle. However, if this is the case it is unclear why Hoyt would turn a blind eye to Jason destroying his organisation, unless Hoyt was somehow testing Jason and trying to co-opt him into working for him, which Hoyt hints at just before and during the final boss fight (i.e. by telling him to "name his price" and telling him that if he had chosen to work for him all his kills would have been rewarded with money)..

Hoyt warns of retaliation against Jason if he kills him, telling him that "powerful friends" will hunt him down. However, since he was at this point beginning to lose the knife fight with Jason, having already been stabbed in the shoulder, this might just have been bluster to save his life.

Hoyt and Vaas are almost the same. Both are sadistic and mentally unstable, both are greedy, both rule islands, that they brutally exploit and both slaughter innocent people.

However, Hoyt is not quite as insane or unstable as Vaas, but is far more intelligent and calculating.

Also, Vaas still shows some respect and friendship with his men, while Hoyt only sees his Privateers as tools and has no problem murdering them if necessary.

Despite being the main antagonist, Hoyt has fewer appearances than Vaas, the secondary antagonist.

Hoyt seems to enjoy smoking Cohiba cigars.

Hoyt appears to prefer European recordings, as he enjoys listening to "Ride of Valkyries" and after saying he finds the American ones too "bombastic".

Despite Hoyt being from South Africa, Willis doubts this as there is no proof he is from there and that he could even be from Colombia or a "big oil company".

Hoyt (as well as Vaas) may have some similarities to Pagan Min they are both are sadistic and mentally unstable.

Despite his relationship to his father Hoyt speaks fondly of him while speaking to his men even calling him a "wonderful man" however this most likely said to inspire his men for loyalty and obedience.

Considering the connections between Far Cry 3 and Alice in Wonderland. Hoyt is a likely representative of The Queen of Hearts due to his role of a crime lord and use of the colour red in his clothing. However one could make the argument that he represents The King of Hearts.